Good afternoon. How are you? Thank you to everybody who's joined the site over the last few weeks. I'm sorry the updates are so sporadic right now. New Monsters are very much in the works, along with a new book, and lots of new graphic design. But today I'd like to introduce you to a new Monster I made for my friends at Leason Ellis, a group of intellectual property lawyers in White Plains, New York, just down the road from a great friend of the Monsters, animation god J.J. Sedelmaier.
About a year ago one of the partners, Peter Sloane, contacted me about helping the firm with a graphic design project, which has led to a lovely exchange of ideas and skills. For one thing, Peter has given me a great education in intellectual property law by helping me file trademarks on the Daily Monster™ and 344 LOVES YOU™. With a little luck, I'll soon be the proud owner of my very own ®.
It ain't as easy as it looks. I didn't realize, for example, how strictly trademark law binds you to protect your intellectual property. You're basically forced to send out onerous cease and desist letters to anybody who comes near your trademark --- not because you're a mean corporation bent on destruction, but because you risk losing the protection of the law if you don't. It's an odd setup, and I'll write about it in more detail down the road.
This post is about a new Monster that Leason Ellis commissioned for their conference room. Wrap your head around that: A law firm with a custom Daily Monster™ in their conference room! You don't see that every day. A Belgian ad agency, sure. But a law firm? Whoda thunk it? They're cool guys!
And it is a tie-wearing Monster, of course, but one of loosened knot. (The tree with fallen apple in the background is their Newtonian logo.) You can click on the image to see a larger version:
Once we had the art approved, my friends at Typecraft made a glorious 72" x 24" print, and the guys at Fine Art Solutions took a break from handling Jill Greenberg and John Baldessari pieces to mount our guy. Take a look:
They even made a custom crate for him:
And here he is, properly installed in New York,
in the company of his legal guardians:
(Yuval H. Marcus, Peter S. Sloane, David Leason, Edward J. Ellis)
Thank you to David Leason and Peter Sloane and everybody at Leason Ellis for letting me play, and for giving a great new home to this Monster. It's a good day at work! And, I hope, a further reminder that 344 LOVES YOU
